PureMac

PureMac is a free, open-source Mac cleanup and application-management utility. It reviews application-related files, orphaned leftovers, cache categories and storage usage, with separate tools for exact duplicates, similar photos and macOS configuration checks.

Review tools

• Find application-related files using configurable heuristic matching; Apple system apps are excluded from uninstall selection.
• Review leftover files associated with applications no longer present.
• Inspect system, user and developer cache categories.
• Explore allocated folder sizes and reveal files in Finder.
• Group exact duplicates by size and SHA-256 content hash while protecting one copy.
• Compare similar photos side by side without automatically deleting them.
• Inspect startup definitions, local snapshots and selected macOS protection settings.

Similar Photos estimates visual similarity and is a manual review tool, not proof of duplication. It skips photo libraries, packages, symbolic links and cloud-only files and has scan limits. Exact-duplicate groups have separate confirmation and identity checks before selected extra copies move to the Trash.

Install and permissions

Install with brew install --cask puremac, or obtain the official signed release and move PureMac.app into Applications. The current cask requires macOS 13 Ventura or later; official releases are universal for Intel and Apple Silicon. The cask lists no additional formula dependency or explicit conflict.

Full Disk Access is needed to inspect protected locations such as Mail downloads and application containers. Without it, some scan results are incomplete. Use the app's onboarding and macOS Privacy & Security settings to grant access only if you want those protected-location features. Some root-owned cleanup paths require separate administrator authorization. Xcode simulator cleanup, Docker cleanup and Homebrew-related actions require the relevant tools and environment.

The official release ZIP labeled 3.0.0 is 6,106,884 bytes. Its embedded application identifies itself as 2.10.0, build 2064, so the application version shown after installation may differ from the release archive's label. Download size is not installed storage or the amount a scan can reclaim.

Deletion and scheduling

Review each path before removal. App-related matching is heuristic and may include files you still need. User-level app uninstall, orphan removal and exact-duplicate removal use the Trash. Dashboard or category cleanup, scheduled cleanup, emptying Trash, Docker or simulator-runtime cleanup, administrator-authorized removal, local snapshot deletion and CLI cleanup can permanently delete data. Moving a file to the Trash is not equivalent to permanent removal, and emptying the Trash is a separate destructive operation.

Manual destructive workflows request confirmation. Persistent exclusions also apply to scheduled cleanup, but scheduled runs are unattended after you enable them. Keep important data backed up, check exclusions and leave scheduling disabled until you understand the selected categories. Clearing caches can require downloads or rebuilding and is not a promise of improved performance.

The app reports purgeable space but deliberately does not offer it as junk to delete; macOS manages that space. It does not promise to boost RAM or guarantee that every deletion race is impossible.

Protection, updates and privacy

Protection inspects settings such as Gatekeeper, FileVault, firewall, System Integrity Protection and XProtect metadata. It is a configuration check, not an antivirus or malware scanner; unavailable checks remain unknown. A startup definition does not establish that a process is running. Local snapshot deletion requires confirmation and does not include system-update snapshots.

App Updates covers Homebrew-managed casks, not every installed application. Checking or installing those updates uses Homebrew and network package sources. The project says local scans and cleaning work offline, with no telemetry, crash reporting or uploading of scanned paths or deleted data. Update operations remain distinct from local scanning.

Cost and license

PureMac is MIT-licensed and has no mandatory account, subscription or paid core-feature tier. Other applications, developer tools and storage services retain their own accounts and licenses.

Sources: Official project, 3.0.0 documentation, 3.0.0 release, MIT license.